God Help Me, I'm Thinking of Voting for Obama

Yes, you read that title right. On Nov. 8, there's a big chance that I -- who voted for W. in 2000 entirely on the basis of abortion, and who chose not to decide between my old mistake and his Skull-and-Bones brother in 2004; I who like to babble about anarchism when I'm drunk and call it being an anarchist -- yes, I might just possibly maybe perhaps kinda sorta go into that voting booth and make my mark -- a little tiny eensy weensy mark -- for Barack Obama.

Back in my church-going paranoid-guilt days, I always knew I would end up supporting the antichrist.

But before I go any further into why I might commit this heinous crime, let me waste some Internet bandwidth talking about why I think I might be stupid for thinking of doing this. Here are some happy fun quotes:

'The credit crisis in the last two weeks of September raised an issue that has, so far at least, helped Obama. McCain railed against Wall Street and called for the firing of Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Christopher Cox. Obama argued that the crisis showed the failure of Reaganite deregulation. The roots of the crisis lie in both parties' encouragement of greater homeownership. But at critical points, notably in 2005, some Republicans, including McCain, called for tighter regulation of the mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. This was resisted by Democrats, with no demur from Obama.'

[emphasis mine]

- Barone, Michael. "The Year of Campaign Chaos." The National Interest column, U.S. News and World Report, Oct. 13-20, 2008. Page 46.

Also this:

'McCain tried to gain traction by accusing Obama of being too passive in the first days of the financial crisis, while McCain returned to Washington to help round of votes for the "rescue" package ... Both Obama and McCain ended up voting for a modified version of Bush's plan in the Senate, which approved it 74 to 25 on October 1.'

- Walsh, Kenneth T. "Swing-State Showdown." U.S. News and World Report, Oct. 13-20, 2008. Page 34.

So are the Democrats (and Obama) more to blame for the current crisis--which started with the whole mortgage thing--than the Republicans?

Even worse, is Obama, chillingly, in the pocket of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac?

Okay, so at least as far as those bleeding-heart lefties at the Washington Post know, Obama has not received any advisory input from Fannie or Freddie. But what about that even more important form of electoral iput--the monetary kind? I'm sure by now you've read letters to the editor at your daily paper saying that Obama received, like, the second-highest donation out of whoever from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Normally the things said in letters to the editor in the Wooster Daily Record don't strike me as necessarily having anything to do with reality, but apparently this time around, Opensecrets.org agrees.

To quote a comment posted by a reader at the bottom of the Opensecrets page:

October 7, 2008 6:40 PM | EngrCharlie said:
This is the nature of the supposedly clean, certainly dubious "individual contributions" to Obama. McCain has released the names of his contributors under $200, why won't Obama do the same? Couldn't be the same Obama who used the rules to exploit the caucus system to ridiculous advantage could it?

Hmm. This could be a problem for my new savior.

To play devil's avocado to this argument, here's another comment posted by another reader at the bottom of the Opensecrets page:

September 20, 2008 2:18 PM | CeeCee said:
Right wing sites are linking to this to suggest that Obama was in the pocket of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac because he is the second highest recipient of donations on the list of Senators and Congressman.

This is an absurd assertion on so many levels. Seeing as how his presidential campaign has raised more money from everywhere than any other in history makes a comparison of his figures to lawmakers raising money for a House or Senate race on its face ludicrous.

And notice how 95% of his contributions came from INDIVIDUALS that work at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. These are not the policy makers of the company. These are just employees that reflect America.

Everybody works somewhere. I happen to work for an oil company. My contributions to Obama will show up under the name of an oil company, as will my co-workers'. We support Obama's positions because they're good for America, regardless of whether they may or may not be good for the executives of our company.

So the contributions from individuals in a company do not mean that that company has influence over the candidate.

Well, for what it's worth. I'm kind of leaning toward that as an excuse.

Of course, there's also the allegations leveled at Obama in this book. Not that I trust the Townhall people farther than I can throw them--the question is, can I really trust the idea that I can't trust them--or that I can trust Obama? What I mean is, maybe the Townhall people are right after all.

Then there's Fareed Zakaria. I learned not to trust Zak when I read a book of his-- I forget the title--where he basically subordinated all freedom to the economic "freedom" of corporations to do whatever they want--and said that democracy (surprise!) could often be antithetical to this freedom. However, I've since read a lot of his writings for Newsweek and stuff, and I found myself liking a lot of what he has to say. So I was only a little bit paranoid he might be involved in an international conspiracy of rich people when I read that Zakaria had endorsed Obama. It's silly of me, but for a while at least, I felt a whole lot more confident about voting for BO after I read Zakaria's article. Then I remembered Zak's a capitalist tool and now I'm back to not knowing what to think, which some may say is my natural state.

So even though I'd earlier decided I couldn't trust Zakaria, I've ended up wanting very much to trust his judgment on a guy I wouldn't have voted for for anything eight years ago. Life is funny.